kakashi: you guys just bully me because i’m older than you

naruto: that’s not true! we bully you for lots of reasons! like how you’re always late and laze around so much!

sakura: or how you always suffer chakra exhaustion

sasuke: actually i don’t have a reason i just do it because it just feels right

Am I missing something when it comes to canon sasuke and itachi? Why does itachi leaving sasuke in a village that wanted his entire family/clan dead make him a hero? Why is this depicted as a heroic and selfless deed? Sure sasuke lived but in what quality of life? He was alone, miserable and sad. And the whole village left him alone and isolated. Sorry for the ramble, you're my fav place for strong opinions and perspectives. I would love to hear what your take is.

Hey thank you. Honestly I think you’re missing a few things:

-The N*ruto universe isn’t the same as ours. Clan honor, ideals, strength and pride are valued differently, as well as human life and death and individuality. So what in our world is horrible, in their is less so, or is inevitable, or justified. It goes for the massacre or for orphans living alone, and many other things. If you look at fictional universes with the same eyes as you look at real life you’ll always miss something, especially universes in shows where people fight all the time. Tbh even if you look that way at very different cultures from different countries or ages, you’ll miss something.

-Quality of life is a real (first) world concept: in a universe where children and teenagers are shinobi death and the value of life are different. On one hand they can die at every mission and they’re ready to sacrifice for what they’re loyal to. On the other, surviving is more important than the quality of life. In short, trauma and depression aren’t considered in their world. Kakashi is a child soldier whose father committed suicide, he has nightmares and suicidal thoughts in his filler arc, he lost everyone he held dear and yet he was put in charge of genin and especially of Sasuke. N*ruto is all alone, Itachi is another former child soldier basically, sent to Anbu (which means being an assassin) at 10, Sai and other orphans are raised by Danzo’s crazy methods and forced to kill each other to be emotionless, Sasuke is clearly depressed and traumatized after the massacre, even kinda hallucinating, but no one cares. It’s horrible but that’s how things go in their world, no matter how many times certain ‘woke’ fans be like ‘they need counsellors and psychologists to address their traumas’.

-In this perspective, to a child who saw war at 4 like Itachi, who loved his baby brother born when peace started, who was forced to become a double agent and spy both clan and village, who lived his whole life in survival mode, saving that baby’s life was the only thing that mattered. More than the quality of his life. Even though it meant breaking Sasuke’s heart and soul, destroying his already low self-esteem and manipulating him into surviving in the safest place he knew, despite Konoha’s dark sides that he knew so well that he threatened Danzo twice, so that he wouldn’t approach Sasuke. 

-You say you appreciate my strong opinions so maybe you know this already but I’m against the concept of martyr Itachi not because I’m anti Itachi but because despite the consequences of his actions I see him as a genius who thought so much ahead of everyone else that he thought in a completely different way compared to everyone else, and he felt in a completely different way as well, even love, even his love for Sasuke, so he took decisions and actions that no one else did, he controlled the life of the person he loved the most because he thought it was for Sasuke’s good, and he took responsibility for all of them. 

-I’ve written so much on the subject that tbh it kinda bores me lol, but don’t worry, you can find a lot of stuff here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and this is the Itachi essays tag.